IU's Davis is stepping down

Mike Davis will no longer be coach of the Hoosiers after this season finishes.

February 17, 2006|By David Haugh, Chicago Tribune

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- When Mike Davis woke up Thursday morning, his 7-year-old son, Antoine, was crying at the thought of Dad no longer being the basketball coach at Indiana University.

The boy's tears stopped with a little bargaining.

"I figured out that all he wanted was some toys," Davis said, using laughter to break the tension at the Assembly Hall news conference at which he announced his resignation effective the end of this season.

In the same way Davis used toys to cheer up his son, the $800,000 Indiana will pay him helped ease the pain of walking away with two years left on a contract from a job that never fit comfortably.

"Please don't be sad for me," Davis said. "This is like the MasterCard commercial. It's priceless what God has given me, to be the head basketball coach here."

Around campus Davis' going-away gift was being hailed as the wisest use of university funds since the last John Mellencamp concert.

As of Thursday night 77 percent of students responding to the Indiana Daily Student online poll said they were happy Davis was leaving. A pickup truck in Assembly Hall's parking lot with "Get Alford" painted on its windshield and passenger side window summed up the prevailing sentiment all over Monroe County. Online posters to the message board at www.firemikedavis.com rejoiced that "the darkness was over."

This was the schism in the basketball program Davis was aware of every day he drove to work and before every Hoosiers game, an empty feeling that had gnawed at him ever since he replaced legend Bob Knight in September 2000. It was a feeling that ultimately brought him to the podium again Thursday.

"It is time for this program to be united," Davis said, sounding more relieved than disappointed.

"I just felt like it was time for the former players, the fans, the alumni and everyone who loves Indiana basketball to be a part of Indiana basketball again."

When Knight was fired by then-IU President Myles Brand, now NCAA president, 2,000 students marched in protest and hung Brand in effigy at a campus rally.

Davis did not help matters by always being on, delivering unfiltered comments that portrayed him as something between a persecuted basketball martyr and a self-pitying adolescent.